1-1 pegging

The initiative states that there have been in 127,408,827 USDC issued and outstanding by Circle Internat Financial Inc, and that the same company holds $127,412,240.89 in bank accounts.

Grant Thornton issued an independent accountant attestation report, which is an evaluation of a client's claim conducted by an independent third party.

Circle Internet Financial, Inc.’s management is responsible for its assertion. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Reserve Account Information in the accompanying Reserve Account Report based on our examination.

Grant Thornton

Audit at one point in time

Interestingly the report attests that USDC is fully backed by dollars "as of October 31, 2018 at 11:59 PM UTC". In other words, the American auditing firm does not guarantee that the stablecoin is continuously backed by fiat reserves.

The auditor:

attests that USD Coin was backed with USD during one minute.

does not attest that USD Coin was fully backed before or after Wednesday 31st of October at 11:59 PM UTC.

does not attest that USD Coin and Circle leverage fractional reserves and fully back their stable coin.

In a nutshell, Grant Thornton guarantees that USD Coin is fully backed with fiat dollars at 11:59 PM - not one minute before nor a minute after.